


North Star

by Living_Underground



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Mulder and Scully have a bath, Mulder crashes the car in a blizzard, That's it, That's literally all that happens, There Is Only One Bed!, and they share a bath, because, oh yeah, so they find a nice b&b to stay in, they share a bed too, what more could you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24742717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: A snowstorm, a bath and a bed (I totally should have called this Bed, Bath and Beyond - but I feel that would have required more alien puns, and I don't think I am capable of alien puns at the moment. Also, it would require some humour. This has no humour. Just...a bath). What more could you want?
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 9
Kudos: 91





	North Star

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I've been having a lot of baths lately. I've been writing about a lot of baths lately. I don't know. Honestly, I don't know what the fuck this even is. Also, I'm on a shit-tonne of painkillers and my meds have been upped again so I am totally out of it and this could be so terrible that it's not even actually legible, but, you know, what the hell, right? It will either be that or it will be a masterpiece. I mean, I always get the best grades for creative work when I am on painkillers, so...
> 
> Ummmm....I have three places in my mind where this is set. Originally I had planned for it to be late-season 2/early season 3. Then I decided I wanted it late season 6. Then I decided on season 5. I figure it's probably somewhere before Christmas Carol but after Detour. I don't know. I honestly...you know, I'm not good at timelines. 
> 
> Also, it ends in a funny place, not funny har har but funny as in odd but not odd as in spooky, odd as in, this isn't an end but I couldn't think of an end and it's already four times longer than I was expecting.

Scully hated snow. No, that’s not true. She didn’t _hate_ it. It put her on edge. Everything was riskier with snow. Slipping over and breaking your neck. Missing evidence. Hypothermia. Frostbite. And, of course, Mulder’s driving.

They’d been arguing over how far the junction was when he drove straight across it, both of them having missed the sign in the dark and the blizzard, Mulder hitting the brakes too hard on the icy road and ending up backwards in the ditch.

A deafening silence pressed in, the hiss of sublimating snow under the chassis and the ticking of the cooling engine muffled by softly thudding flakes.

They were both staring straight ahead, gaze fixed on the dim yellow beams of headlights hitting the snow, neither wanting to admit it was their fault, both running through mental checks. Head still on. Fingers still wiggle. Neck slightly stiff. Feet still have feeling. Still, seemingly, alive.

‘You okay?’

Scully rolled her shoulders before looking over at him. ‘Think so. You?’

‘Neck hurts, I think I jarred my knee, too.’

‘Hmm. Over here,’ she brings her hands to his face, tilting his head down towards her, threading fingers into his soft hair as she looks into his eyes. She checks quickly for head wounds before going back to his eyes, holding a finger up. ‘How many?’

’42?’

‘Mulder-‘ the warning tone in her voice was gentle, barely a warning at all.

‘One.’

‘Thank you. Follow,’ she moved her finger side to side, content when his vision followed. Grinned when he went cross-eyed as she booped him on the nose before turning back to face the front. ‘Whiplash, probably.’ She pulled her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, groaned when there was no signal. The weather, combined with being in the middle of goddamn nowhere, probably.

Mulder turned the key in the ignition and the engine turned over once before a choked splutter, and then it died, no amount of key jiggling bringing it back to life. ‘I’ll go see what’s wrong with it.’

Scully didn’t want to point out that he knew nothing about cars. She’d been right about the junction being closer than he thought and she wasn’t sure he would want her to be right about the car too – she guessed already that there was little she could do for it. ‘You want me to help?’

He shook his head no, ‘one of us has to stay warm.’

A comment that he was the injured one, that he should probably be the one staying warm, was lost to the wind as he opened his door, pulling his light jacket from the back as he left. Their heavier coats were in the trunk, where they had buried them as they left the police station, wrapping up the case they had solved.

Well. Solved was a bit of a strong word, in her opinion.

She reached into the glove compartment, fished around until her fingers closed around a spiral-bound roadmap of the state and a flashlight – again, theirs were in the trunk. She could at least use the time he was pondering over their dead rental to find the nearest service station.

There wasn’t one for three miles. Three miles in a blizzard.

No. No, thank you.

They’d passed a bed and breakfast sign about half a mile back. It was the closest to civilisation they were going to get. Even if they didn’t have any vacancies, they probably had a phone they could use.

She grabbed her bag from the back and her blazer. Then she reached across and popped the trunk, clambered out of the car and promptly sunk into the knee-deep drift of snow. A sluggish wading movement had her at the trunk, hurriedly jamming her arms into her warm winter coat - not as warm as the one she’d taken to Alaska, but it would do – and pulling up the hood. She clicked open her case and grabbed the bare minimums – toiletries and clean underwear, her big flashlight – before doing the same with Mulder’s case. And then she was making her way to the front of the car where her partner was shivering as he tentatively wiggled this and that in a display of complete ignorance.

‘Never fixed a car, have you?’

He shook his head, teeth gritted together to stop them from chattering.

‘Arms,’ she held his coat out for him, helping him slip it on. His suit jacket was wet through, and she was fairly certain that the blue tint to his lips was not just from the darkness around them. His hands shook violently as he tried to line the two ends of the zip up and, concerned and taking pity on him, she gently batted his hands away and zipped him up. Then she reached up, pulled the hood down, took his hand and guided him over to the slightly less deep snow on the road-actual. ‘We’re going to that B&B we passed half a mile back. You think you can make it?’

His ‘uh-huh’ wasn’t all that convincing, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer, and so wrapping his large, cold hand in her smaller one, she slipped them both into his significantly deeper pocket and kept them there, tethering them together, ostensibly trying to reintroduce some body heat into him. A flick of her flashlight and they had a spotlight to follow, their north star guiding them home. Scully wanted to laugh at the way his flashlight hung loosely in his grasp, the beam overlaying on hers. Magnetic, like them. She goes where he points. He goes where she points. One another's compasses, one another's north stars. She doesn't laugh, though. It's too cold, and Mulder is too heavy, and she's focusing far too much on trying not to land them both face down in the snow. Where one goes, the other follows. 

The walk felt infinite. It took far longer than it should have. About halfway, Mulder started tripping over his own feet, leaning into her more, slowing down more. His teeth had stopped chattering. ‘We’ve got to keep going, Mulder. Not far now.’ His hood had slipped down again, and she tugged it up, trying to keep the concern from her eyes when he didn’t react to her hand brushing against his cheek. ‘Come on, just a little bit further.’

His knees buckled ten yards from the B&B sign. It wasn’t the first time she had supported the majority of Mulder’s weight, and it wouldn’t be the last, but in the cold and the snow, with the flashlight aimed at the ground in front of them to guide their way, it was by far the worst. Their coats were both laden down with snow and frozen stiff, compacted ice was heavy on the soles of their boots and turning off the road towards the driveway meant wading through knee-deep snow again, something neither of their trousers were designed for. She was just glad she had been sensible enough to not even think about packing skirts for this assignment.

The house was dark when they reached it, just the single candle glowing in the front window. That didn’t bode well. The weight already sinking in Scully’s stomach plumbed even lower. They were about to be turned away, she knew it. She wouldn’t be able to drag Mulder much further; she was so, so tired. ‘Just a few more steps, Mulder. Come on, you can do it,’ she was talking to herself and she knew it. Mulder had stopped responding audibly. Just a nod or shake of his head was about all she got. ‘Up we go, there, one more, one more and we’ll be out of the snow. Come on, Mulder.’

And they were there. Under the shelter of the porch, she dropped him, letting him sink to his knees and slump against her as she caught her breath and rang the bell. She kept patting his hooded head, just to check he was still more or less upright as they waited for the door to be opened. What felt like a white eternity was little more than thirty seconds, and then candlelight was flickering in a hurricane lamp in front of them and they were being ushered inside and she was hauling Mulder up and warm warm warm, _oh so warm_.

It hadn’t even occurred to her, when they were led up the stairs and down a corridor five minutes later, that to the question ‘do you want a room?’ she had said _yes_ , rather than her usual _two, please_. She was too cold to care, though.

‘There’s a bathroom across the ways there, and I’ll bring some warmed blankets up for the two of you,’ their host, shaded in darkness, lit a candlestick and handed it to Scully once they walked into the room. ‘I’ll go heat some water up for a bath.’

‘Where are the lights?’

‘Power’s out. Same as why I told you you can’t make no phone calls. Storm, see. Funny idea, going walking around out in this.’

And then they were alone. Scully lowered Mulder to the armchair in the corner of the room, a ghastly, overstuffed chintz monstrosity, and unzipped his coat, pulling it off of him and chucking it into a pile on the far side of the room. She repeated the move with her own coat, quickly followed by both their jackets.

She took the candle then, finding more in the wardrobe, and lit them from the one she was holding, spreading them about the room and carrying a couple across the hall to the bathroom. She’d have been surprised the water worked at all, given the state of the plumbing.

‘Ah, you found the spare candles then,’ a voice interrupted, warm and low, slightly gravelly, a fatherly tone to it. She turned to see an older man, two saucepans in hand, stand in the doorway behind her. ‘The wife’s just bringing up the kettle and another pan. Wanted to warm some towels, too,’ he smiled at her, pouring the steaming water into the copper tub,’ you’ll want to fill the rest with cold water, else it’ll be too hot.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Not a problem.’

* * *

It wasn’t until he’d been in the bath for a few minutes that he protested her presence. ‘I’m a doctor, Mulder. I’ve seen it all before. I don’t want you to slip into unconsciousness and drown.’

‘I won’t. I’m perfectly warm now, see,’ he held a salmon pink hand out towards her and she took it. He _was_ warming up. Her cold hand remained in his warm one, selfishly trying to draw some of his newfound heat. ‘Wanna join me?’

‘I…’ she blinked, mouth agape – opening and closing like one of his mollies - stared at him, kept her eyes firmly fixed on his, not letting them drift any further south. Not to those lips, pouting. Not to that torso, muscle rippling under the rivulets of hot water. Not to his- ‘A second ago you were telling me to get out.’

‘Now I’m telling you to get in. So?’

‘So, your sudden change in mind concerns me.’

‘I’m just thinking of you here Scully. You’re so wet-‘

Her cheeks flushed. His tone was completely innocent. More innocent than Mulder had ever managed in his life. But his words, oh those words. In her head, he was saying them with a much huskier voice, in a much more compromising position. _Jesus_. She would most certainly not be getting into that bathtub with him. Not right now. Not with her mind where it was. ‘Mulder-‘

‘Come on, Scully. You need to warm up too. Just get in, I don’t mind.’ She didn’t mind either. That was the problem.

‘I’ll have a bath after you.’

‘Water will be cold then. And didn’t Mr and Mrs whats-a-name say they were going to bed? Not like you’ll be able to creep down and boil some more water without their help, and you don’t want to wake them now, do you?’ A pout. He knew _exactly_ what he was saying.

‘That’s- I- Mulder, I’m more concerned about you right now. I’ll warm up fine just as soon as I’m out of my wet clothes.’

‘You could take them off now, you know. You’re only going to get colder if you stay in them.’

He had a point there. Her brain was agreeing with him, she _was_ only getting colder. It would be sensible to at least strip of her wet things. ‘Fine.’

‘You’re a doctor, you’ve seen it all before,’ he parroted back, and with an infuriated huff she turned away, shucked off her pants and blouse, bra and panties closely following with a warning for him to not look. He coughed, and she heard the slosh of water as he shifted, ‘wouldn’t dream of it.’ As she stood there, wondering whether it was worth wrapping herself in one of the towels that had been left on the lid of the toilet, she felt his gaze rest on her back. ‘Since you’re halfway there, you might as well just get in.’ A sigh. He was right.

‘You’re not looking?’

‘Of course not. I’m a gentleman, Scully. I don’t look at ladies when they’re about to join me in the tub. Besides, too dark in here to see anything with any clarity, you’re more like a renaissance painting, all in shadow…’

Infuriating. She looked over her shoulder, studied his face as he stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s not exactly a big bath, Mulder. Where am I goin-‘ before she could finish he had scooted forwards, bending his knees up. Another sigh, a glance at the door to check it really was locked, and she slipped into the water behind him, and – oh God, was that good. She hadn’t realised just how cold she herself had gotten until the pinpricks of heat splintered deliciously through her skin.

‘I know, right?’ Mulder chuckled lowly, the rumble of it rippling through the water.

‘You know, I’d probably fit better in front of you.’

There was a moment of silence and he shifted again. ‘Uh…I think you’d be more comfortable back there, to be honest.’

It wasn’t until her foot brushed against the outside of his thigh that she realised what he meant. ‘Oh, God, I…’

‘Sorry. God, sorry, Scully. It’s not because of…I mean, it is because of…well, you’re just…but, I mean, it doesn’t…I’m not, I won’t…it’s just…’

She schooled her features, took a breath, closed her eyes and bit back a grin at his discomfort. ‘It’s a natural reaction, Mulder. Nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘Right, yeah. I just…sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘Mulder?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Stop apologising.’ She reached her hands up to his shoulders, running fingers over whiplashed neck. Her feet had settled either side of his hips and she stretched her legs forwards experimentally, lifting them slightly and nudging her heels against his hard abdomen. She watched his back tense, muscles ripple under his skin. ‘Settle back here,’ she murmured sotto voce.

‘Uhh…against you?’

‘Mmhm. Lowers the surface-volume ratio, preserves heat.’

He shifted back, water sloshing, until he was leaning back against her and her legs were twining around his middle, her arms around his torso. ‘Still decreasing that surface-volume ratio, Agent Scully?’ They both gasped, bodies stiffening as her leg slipped down slightly, shin bumping his hard erection.

She’d taken it too far. Of course she had. She pulled her limbs away from him, regretting her decision to join him. Should have just waited until he was warmed up enough, used the remaining heat of the bathwater. It wouldn’t have been as efficient, but it would have been professional. The right thing to do.

‘Hey, no…’ one hand on her forearm, one on her opposite ankle, wrapping her back around him like an octopus, ‘I like preserving heat.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Only, I mean…if you’re okay with it, that is…’

‘It’s biology, Mulder. It’s fine.’ And it was. Fine. _Fine._

‘O-okay.’

‘Um,’ she paused, trying to figure out a phrasing that sounded professional, ‘where would you be comfortable with my legs?’

He seemed to consider it for a long moment, so long she wasn’t sure he’d forgotten what she had asked, concern that he was still hypothermic flashing through her mind. She was about to check when he turned his face, candlelight flickering in his dark eyes as he searched for hers. ‘They were fine where they were. Maybe a bit higher up though? I mean, if that’s comfortable. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.’

‘That’s fine, yeah,’ she wrapped herself back around him, closing the space between them again, feeling tension still radiating through him as he eased back. Her fingers trailed up his torso to skim her thumbs back and forth across his clavicles, her fingertips ghosting the base of his throat, both of them settling into the silence and the dark.

At some point, his head dropped back onto her shoulder and her fingers on that hand absentmindedly tangled into his hair; soft, barely-there ministrations that had both their eyes slipping shut.

His weight against her was a comfort; something she hadn’t realised how much she’d been craving lately. Just to have a firm, human body against her own, held in her grasp. Her hand above his heart she could feel the life in him; the soft thud of blood forcing its way around his body, the slow expansion and contraction of intercostal muscles. She felt so, so tiny, wrapping herself around him, and yet there was no feeling of intimidation or depreciation in her diminutive size around his long, lanky frame. Where with other men, all taller and broader than she, there was nearly always a feeling on being looked down on, of being patronised and having to fight to be seen and heard as a professional woman, with Mulder they were equal. Partners. Her ideas and thoughts and opinions were as valid as his – most of the time, anyway. He never looked down on her. Never used his height and strength against her. Never thought less of her. They were entwined in respect and camaraderie.

_And_ , she thought, _her legs._

A candle guttered. Shadows ghosted across the walls, monsters and goblins and aliens vying for their spot in the limelight.

Their light dropped by a fifth.

Her voice was lost for a moment. She wondered whether they should hold a séance with remaining candles to find it again. ‘Warmed up enough?’ A barely-there brush of words against his ear, murmured as her lips grazed his shell.

Whoever was controlling their volumes had clearly turned them down, increased the base slightly. ‘Yeah, you?’

They’d started the bath with quiet, indoor voices. Now they were using hushed whispers that neither of them had to strain to hear in their bubble of intimacy: they were tuned in to one another, they knew what the other was thinking.

‘Do you want to get out first, or do you want me to-?’

‘You go first.’

He stood up, slipping slightly and reaching down for the support of her hand, and reached over for one of the warmed towels that had been left for them. It wasn’t the softest towel in existence, but it smelled clean and fresh, like the snow outside, and he wrapped it around his waist as he clambered out, dripping a trail of water behind him. ‘I’ll, uh, I’ll be in the room.’

When he turned back to look at her she had artfully crossed her legs, holding her arms in a faux relaxed position to mask his vision of anything she was less than convinced that either of them was ready for. ‘Okay. I packed you some dry boxers in my bag. I didn’t have enough space for anything else I’m afraid.’

He nodded, the heavy noise of the bolt sliding back obscenely loud in the peace that had settled.

She took a moment, when the door was closed behind him, to stretch her limbs out, turn her legs back inwards, straighten her hips out, sink further into the lukewarm water, missing the protection of his body from the chill of the room.

She slipped under, staring upwards through the rippled water to the flickering golden glow. It was an alien world. Darkness surrounded her completely like ink under the water, oil slicking around her and wrapping her body away from sight, except for the intermittent glow from up above. When the burn in her lungs grew too much she broke the surface, wondering how it would feel to have Mulder starving her of breath, how it would be to gasp into him, share his air like they shared everything else; space, time, baths, everything.

* * *

Their room was warm when she entered, an orange glow cast about from the fire that had been lit in the grate. ‘They left a note, said we should hang our clothes in front of it to dry them out,’ Mulder said, catching her gaze as she stared at the dancing flames. He already had hung his on one side, using one of two old wooden frames that had been left in the room whilst they were bathing. ‘I can do yours while you change?’

‘Uh…sure. Thank you,’ she handed her bundle of wet clothes over, averting her eyes from his bare legs and focusing instead on his blanket-swaddled torso. Their coats were laid out on the floor; best not to introduce polyester to flames. She concentrated on not stepping on them in the dark as she wound her way over to her bag, plucking out her underwear and slipping them on under the towel she clung to until the very last. And then Mulder’s silence grew oppressive. His eyes were not on her, she knew that. They were on his fingers, as hers now were, as they both stood silently staring at how _small_ her panties looked in his hands. White. Simple. Cotton. Nothing flashy, not whilst working. But there was something so…intimate about him hanging them up to dry, specifically because they were so plain. His hands weren’t holding them because she had chosen them for him, to seduce him. No. He was holding them so she would be comfortable tomorrow. His thumb ran over them because they were _hers_. Not because they were lace and sexy. If he were to lift them to his nose, they’d still smell of her.

Her soft inhale, hardly enough to be called a gasp but enough to break the tension, brought them both out of their reveries and musings about undergarments and back to the reality of being two stranded federal agents stood scantily clothed in a B&B room that neither had paid attention to the pricing of on their entry. The reality of being two stranded federal agents stood scantily clothed in a B&B room who were both definitely attracted to one another and who had just shared a bath, but who were both convinced that they were bad for the other. And the other didn’t see them in the same way. And they were both definitely scared of their own feelings on the matter.

Fantasising about Scully’s simple underwear was much better than the reality gaping before them, a gap filled perfectly with a floral bedspread and a dip in the middle of the mattress. It was going to be a long night.

Left or right was a question asked long ago, their first, awkward, fumbled time sharing a bed because of a screw-up with motel bookings. These days they both knew automatically which side was whose, and that there was no point bothering to each cling to the edges in a desperate last-ditch attempt to not touch one another; it was uncomfortable and they would end up knotted together halfway through the night anyway, so there was little point.

This time, though, they had the excuse of the cold.

‘Is this the best position for preserving body heat, Dr Scully?’ He asked once they had both burrowed down into the covers, nestling into one another and the dented mattress.

His nose was buried in her hair, one arm under her head and the other wrapped around her stomach, their legs folded together and her toned back pressed against his torso.

‘Hmmm. I think so. If you were still hypothermic I’d turn to face you. Have our hearts pressing together. Try and give you some of my body heat.’

‘I wouldn’t let you,’ he shook his head, nuzzling his face further into the back of her skull and pulling him tighter to him. They both lapsed into silence, crackling wood filling the warming air around them. She was about to ask him why when he beat her to it. ‘I wouldn’t let you give me any of your body heat when you need it. Besides,’ he yawned, letting his eyes slide shut as sleep crept through his brain like a mist rolling in of the sea, ‘our hearts are always together.’

They would wake in the morning to dying embers and a beam of harsh light stabbing them through a slit in heavy curtains, contented to lay in silence in one another’s arms, both pretending to be slumbering still and both knowing that the other was awake, just keeping the dream that this could be their reality alive for a few moments longer. They wouldn’t admit any of the moments they shared the night before as they begged to pay for two rooms instead of one with the Bureau’s chequebook, insisting that the second room be put on the receipt and the money be taken as payment for a ride to their car and then to the nearest garage. They would stare straight ahead in the cab of the B&B owner’s pickup, neither listening as he rambled on, their thighs and little fingers pressed together.

They would both retain the memory of that snowy night, though. Of teeth stopping chattering and of a lone candle in the window. Of wet skin snared together and the depths of an old copper tub. Of wood-smoke clothes and the comfort of sleepy mornings spent in silence. Of thoughts of future flashlight beams in the dark, and that actually, just maybe, they were one another's north star, guiding them home.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a feeling there are a lot of commas. Sorry. I like commas. I tried proofreading this, I really did. But my brain feels like soup at the moment, so... maybe I'll come back to this one day. I don't know.


End file.
